I'm guessing it's because of the higher hydration? And then there's the crust.

Gene

Gene,

When I was attempting to make Jet’s pizzas, I thought they were also very good along with the Sicilian pies I had made with a somewhat higher hydration. The crumb of the Jet’s and Sicilian pizzas were light, but not as light as the Buddy’s clone attempts I have been attempting.

It could be from the higher hydrations that a Detroit style pizza is lighter in the crumb, but probably there are other variables I don’t understand.

This is what I wrote in an email and what Buddy’s Pizza replied this morning.

Hi Buddy’s Pizza,

I would like to ask a question about when you changed from deck ovens to conveyor ovens (what years). I see you have been in the business of making pizzas for 66 years and that was before conveyor ovens were used. I wondered if you could also tell me if there are any of your pizza businesses locations that still use a deck oven to make your pizzas, and if they do, if it is a replacement or an original deck oven.

Thanks,

Norma

Thank you for your inquiry. We have been using conveyor ovens for over 30 years.

Jeff (jeff v) was kind enough to send me some Weyauwega brick cheeses to try on some Buddy’s clone pizzas. I received the Weyauwega mild brick cheese and the Weyauwega aged brick cheese today when I returned from market. Jeff had the Weyauwega brick cheese packaged very well and the brick cheeses arrived in very good shape.

Thanks so much Jeff for sending me the Weyauwega brick cheeses to try on my Buddy’s clone attempts. I appreciate it very much what you did.

I am looking forward to trying the Weyauwega brick cheeses on some Buddy’s clone attempts next Tuesday.

The Nutrition Facts for the Weyauwega brick cheese are posted in the second picture.

I just wanted to post that all the Buddy’s clone pizzas that were made today did have more height using the Buddy’s clone formulation with 72% hydration, no salt and 1% IDY and a higher dough temperature.

Jeff (jeff v) was kind enough to send me some Weyauwega brick cheeses to try on some Buddy’s clone pizzas. I received the Weyauwega mild brick cheese and the Weyauwega aged brick cheese today when I returned from market. Jeff had the Weyauwega brick cheese packaged very well and the brick cheeses arrived in very good shape.

Thanks so much Jeff for sending me the Weyauwega brick cheeses to try on my Buddy’s clone attempts. I appreciate it very much what you did.

I am looking forward to trying the Weyauwega brick cheeses on some Buddy’s clone attempts next Tuesday.

The Nutrition Facts for the Weyauwega brick cheese are posted in the second picture.

OK, sounds good. I would have thought you have tried aged brick already in your experiments Norma...learn something new everyday. I'm sure it will be quite different from what you've been doing and I hope it tastes/melts good for you.Good luck... Bob

I would have thought you have tried aged brick already in your experiments Norma...learn something new everyday. I'm sure it will be quite different from what you've been doing and I hope it tastes/melts good for you.Good luck... Bob

Bob,

No I haven’t tried aged brick cheese in my any of the Buddy’s clone experiments. I know Buddy’s isn’t using aged brick cheese from tasting their pizza, but it will be interesting to try aged brick cheese.

It is really hard to kill a dough with a lot of yeast, especially one that is fermented for a relatively short period of time. If the fermentation period were several days, and assuming no added sugar in the dough, a point might be reached where the conversion of damaged starch to sugars by enzymatic performance could result in a dough that starts to collapse and produce a final dough with reduced height. Given your relatively short fermentation time, I was not particularly worried about the elevated room temperature, the extended warmup time and the elevated finished dough temperature that you experienced. But I wanted you to see for yourself how those factors would affect your dough, and to react to those factors. Eventually, you will want to develop a fixed protocol for making your Buddy's clone doughs for market, while adjusting as necessary to the many variables at market that can affect dough performance. But so long as you stay between the lines asw much as possible, I think you should be OK overall.

BTW, did you use a 9-ounce dough ball or a 9.5-ounce dough ball? Either way, I do not think that the one percent increase in hydration was responsible for the elevated height in the final crust. I would credit the high-yeast, high-temperature environment.

The brick cheese that jeff v sent you has a similar profile to the other brick cheese candidates that we have considered but with a bit more salt (as reflected by the increased sodium content). But the increase in salt should be imperceptible to the palate.

It is really hard to kill a dough with a lot of yeast, especially one that is fermented for a relatively short period of time. If the fermentation period were several days, and assuming no added sugar in the dough, a point might be reached where the conversion of damaged starch to sugars by enzymatic performance could result in a dough that starts to collapse and produce a final dough with reduced height. Given your relatively short fermentation time, I was not particularly worried about the elevated room temperature, the extended warmup time and the elevated finished dough temperature that you experienced. But I wanted you to see for yourself how those factors would affect your dough, and to react to those factors. Eventually, you will want to develop a fixed protocol for making your Buddy's clone doughs for market, while adjusting as necessary to the many variables at market that can affect dough performance. But so long as you stay between the lines asw much as possible, I think you should be OK overall.

BTW, did you use a 9-ounce dough ball or a 9.5-ounce dough ball? Either way, I do not think that the one percent increase in hydration was responsible for the elevated height in the final crust. I would credit the high-yeast, high-temperature environment.

The brick cheese that jeff v sent you has a similar profile to the other brick cheese candidates that we have considered but with a bit more salt (as reflected by the increased sodium content). But the increase in salt should be imperceptible to the palate.

Peter

Peter,

Thanks for letting me find out myself that it is really hard to kill dough with a lot of yeast. I really didn’t think the high amount of yeast would kill the dough, but was concerned on how it would behave today.

I know I will want to develop a fixed protocol for making a Buddy’s clone dough for market. I just have a few more things I need to straighten out first. The only problem I had today was the Buddy’s clone pizzas did have the height I wanted, but not too long after the bake, some of them wanted to fall down some where the sauce was applied. I just stood there and watched that happen in a matter of about 5 minutes. I will post those pictures tomorrow and also post what else happened, but found it strange that the crust rose well in the bake and then wanted to fall some after sitting out for a little. I sure don’t know what caused that.

I did use 9.5-ounce dough balls for all the 4-square pizzas I made today. I made one Buddy’s clone pizza that I did weigh the coarse grind pepperoni, the cheese blend and sauce and somehow that pizza weighed a lot less after the bake than the other Buddy’s cheese and pepperoni clone pizzas I made before. That also has me stumped, unless it was because I left it sit there for about 5 minutes before I could weigh it because I had to wait on customers.

I also had a dough ball in a pan that I didn’t use in the deli case. At the end of the day I did spread it in the steel pan and then wanted to bring it home to freeze it to see what would happen if it was frozen. I forgot that dough in the steel pan. It should be interesting to see what happened to it when I go to market again.

Thanks for telling me that the brick cheeses that Jeff sent me have a similar profile to the other brick cheese candidates that we have considered, but with a bit more salt. I don’t keep all those profiles handy for different brick cheeses.

This post is to show how the poppy seed spacings changed (since Sunday to yesterday morning and then when I first tempered the dough ball), to tell when that Buddy’s clone cheese pizza was baked from the dough ball that had the poppy seed on and other things I observed in this Buddy’s clone cheese pizza.

The processing cap did have a lot of condensation on the top of the cap when I removed it from the deli case at 8:57 AM and then I used the measuring tape to measure the poppy seed spacings and put it back into the deli case. I wanted to wait until last to use the dough ball with the poppy seeds on it to maybe see how long it would still be okay since I used more yeast in the formulation and a higher dough temperature.

The dough ball was taken out of the deli case again at 12:51 PM and the poppy seed spacings were measured again and then the dough ball was spread out in the steel pan and put into the Hatco Unit at about 84 degrees F (I used a lower Hatco Unit temperature yesterday to see how that would temper the dough in the steel pans). The lower Hatco Unit temperature did temper the dough balls enough in all of the dough balls I tempered in about 1 hr. yesterday. I dressed the dough with the poppy seed spacing at 2:06 PM. It can be seen that the places the sauce was applied to did get lower in height about the bake. The crumb and texture where the sauce was applied was okay, but not the height of the other crumb. It can been seen in the last picture how the crumb fell some after it cooled, when it was in the pizza box. I had taken those two slices out of my heating holding cabinet then to take them home, because they were leftover.

It stumps me some as why when sauce is applied in some of my Buddy’s clone pizzas why the crumb is lower in those places in some of the pizzas I made yesterday and then some were okay.

At least I know that the Buddy’s clone emergency dough with a higher final dough temperature and 1% IDY can be use later in the day from this experiment. I also found out that when using the processing caps that the dough balls and doughs that tempered in the steel pans does not dry out.

This was the Buddy’s clone coarse grind pepperoni and AMPI mild white cheddar and mozzarellas blended cheese pizza. The dough ball was scaled to 9.5 ounces, the 20 coarse grind pepperoni slices weighed 1.366 ounces, the cheese blend weight was 8 ounces and the amount of sauce applied was 4 ounces. The final baked weight after 5 minutes out of the oven was 519 grams. The coarse grind pepperoni was put under the cheeses. This Buddy’s clone pizza was baked at about 10:53 AM.

These are some of the other Buddy’s clone pizzas that were made yesterday and how some of the doughs looked in the steel pans. The first doughs were pressed out in the steel pans and put into the Hatco unit about 9:00 AM and were ready to bake in about an hour. I am not sure what temperature to put the Hatco Unit at, but 84 degrees F did work okay in tempering the doughs in the steel pans for an hour yesterday.

Other stand holders and I weren’t really busy yesterday and nobody really understood why (not even meat stand holders that were selling pork to use for our areas traditional pork and sauerkraut dinner today), but at least customers are liking the Buddy’s clone pizzas when they try them. I don’t have much signage up at my pizza stand, or any signage around different places at market about the Buddy’s clones (or as I call them Detroit style pizzas), but will make more signage up when I get all my methods down right and can make the Detroit style pizzas all okay. I am also still deciding what different Detroit style pizzas to offer to potential customers. At least the Buddy’s clone pizzas, aka Detroit style pizzas, are taking hold better than some other styles of pies I tried to offer to potential customers before.

The last picture is how the dough ball in the plastic bag fermented until the end of the day. I didn’t use it and then reballed it to freeze later, but Dave wanted to purchase that dough ball.

At the end of the day I do wipe out all the steel pans and grease them with MFB and put them into the oven for a little while to make sure they don’t want to stick when I want to use them again.

All in all, everything went pretty good yesterday, but there is still need for improvement. I even put thinner and thicker sauces on different Buddy’s clones and that doesn’t seem to make too much of any differences.

The last picture of the Buddy’s clone pizza got the highest in height. It had 4 meats on, but two of the meats (salami and Cappicola ham were thinly sliced and put under the cheese blends. I don’t know why that Buddy’s clone pizza got so high in height. When it was in the steel pan before the bake, it almost reached the top of the steel pan.

If I recall correctly, you previously experienced the phenomenon of the finished crust sinking where the sauce racing stripes were put down. It is almost like a mattress sinking where a person is lying on it. There may be several explanations for what you experienced but one simple test that comes to mind to see if it was the weight of the sauce that was responsible for the sinking effect is to replace the 4 ounces of sauce that you have been using with 4 ounces of something else of similar consistency, such as finely diced cooked mushrooms or peppers that are also laid down in stripes. However, such a test might not be dispositive if you cannot replicate the condition of the dough that ended up sinking under the sauce, either before or after baking.